Speak of the Greek

One of the benefits of having kids, aside from all that gratification unavoidably heaped upon you daily, is that you can task them with duties. Next to taking out the compost, the most common duty for our boys is that of cart pusher at the grocery store. With the grocery less than a mile away it is an almost daily endeavor enabling just-in-time produce consumption. The ten-year-old is a capable cart pusher and often tags along on the quick shop run and even with the short travel to the store, a parent can be subjected to a massive amount of verbal data spewing forth from the back seat.

This evening it was all Greek speak. I am not certain where he gleans his information and am not certain as to how many actual facts are contained in any one of his soliloquies but he can go on a good distance about notable figures such as Hades, Poseidon, Ares, Apollo, Achilles and many more.

It wasn't contained to just the car ride either. A fountain of facts flowed across the parking lot, through the automatic doors, along the produce aisle and continued nearly uninterrupted until just past the bread aisle. The only pauses came when I would utter the next item on the grocery list. Sometimes as we were passing through refrigerator sections, I didn't even hear what he was saying. I saw him gesturing and his lips moving but the surrounding din just cancelled out the information. So I smiled, nodded and rolled on down the aisle.

Despite his ability to read, recite and regale one with stories of gods sitting on the walls of Troy, it didn't prevent him from performing the unspeakable. There, amidst loaves of artisan bread, I mistakenly sauntered too slowly and his cart pushing abilities came full force in a most jarring and unpleasant fashion against the Greek of my heel. The pained and glaring look on my face was guidance enough and once I got my color back, he dedicated his exposition for the next seven aisles to Achilles. Apparently Achilles' mother, in attempt to immortalize him, dipped him in a river and the only part not dipped was his heel, the source of his eventual demise.

One day, perhaps years from now, my son inevitably will experience epic grocery cart pain, probably at the hands of one of his brothers. I only hope that I am there and that he relays the same mythical tales so I can catch the name of that river of immortality.